911 service was cut from several states following CenturyLink outage.

23 days ago

A massive outage knocked out 911 emergency call services in several states. The Federal Communications Commission was investigating the CenturyLink outage.

The outage began early in the day but by late Thursday night, the company tweeted that its engineers had identified a “network element” that was affecting services and expected to fully restore services within hours.

U.S. officials began investigations Friday, a press release issued by the Massachusetts State Police at 8:16 p.m. Friday stated that the 911 service disruption had been corrected.

State police urged people in the release not to “test functionality” of the system by calling 911 or the local 10-digit emergency phone number, and to only call in the case of an emergency.

Among the areas affected included Seattle, Washington and Salt Lake City, Utah. Several other states, including Idaho, Oregon, Arizona, and Missouri, were also affected, local news has reported.

Many other police departments tweeted out alternative numbers for 911 in the event of an emergency.

Ajit Pai, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates and monitors 911 services, said the commission is investigating the outage.

“When an emergency strikes, it’s critical that Americans are able to use 911 to reach those who can help,” said Pai in a statement. “The CenturyLink service outage is therefore completely unacceptable, and its breadth and duration are particularly troubling.”